Basic
First Name:
Bruce
Last Name:
Coppock
City:
Cambridge
State:
MA
Country:
USA
First Year:
1974
Last Year:
1976
Biography
Birthday:
5/12/1951
About:
Bruce Coppock served twice as president & managing director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, a position in which he served both as the artistic and the executive leader of the organization for nearly 12 years. Coppock first led the SPCO from 1999 until 2008, when he stepped down due to metastatic cancer of the bile duct, of which he is now a ten-year survivor. After a five-year hiatus during which Coppock focused on medical issues, served a consultant to several orchestras, and served as managing director of the Cleveland Orchestra’s Miami Residency, Coppock resumed his tenure in Saint Paul in 2013. He retired from the SPCO at the end of 2015. Coppock’s tenures at the SPCO were marked by profound changes in the community and artistic profile of the SPCO, replacement of the music director with a collaborative artistic leadership structure, which includes SPCO musicians at the heart of artistic governance and a system of revolving artistic partners. During his tenure at the SPCO, its audience grew by over 40%. Coppock played a leadership role in conception and construction of an intimate, purpose-built 1100 seat concert hall, designed specifically to the SPCO’s acoustical specifications, and which opened in 2015. Coppock’s second two and a half -year term at the SPCO served as the capstone to a fifteen-year effort to place the SPCO musicians at the heart of its artistic governance, and to alter dramatically the artistic profile of the SPCO. Indeed, Coppock’s successor as artistic leader of the SPCO is an SPCO musician, the violinist Kyu-Young Kim. Prior to Saint Paul, Coppock served as the founding director of the League of American Orchestra’s Orchestra Leadership Academy, and as deputy director of Carnegie Hall, where he oversaw the early planning for the creation and programming of Zankel Hall. As executive director of the Saint Louis Symphony from 1992-1997, Coppock pursued a broad-based community engagement strategy, including the merger of the Symphony with the community music school and the development of comprehensive community engagement programs, particularly in the African-American community. Since 1990, Coppock has been extremely active at the national level, leading several orchestra industry task forces, consulting widely and serving on national media negotiating committees. Coppock has also been active as a Board member, at the Harlem Boys Choir, the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and the Curtis Institute of Music Board of Overseers. He currently is active as a cellist, teacher, and consultant, serves on the Board of the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation, and has been part of the core faculty for the League’s seminar, Essentials of Orchestra Management. For the 20 years prior to 1990, when his left hand was broken in a car accident, Coppock was a professional cellist, performing regularly in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as principal cellist of the Handel & Haydn Society, member of the Boston Music Viva, and with numerous other chamber orchestras and chamber ensembles in Boston. He was co-founder, cellist and executive director of the Boston Chamber Music Society from 1982-1990, and toured and recorded extensively. During this period he also served as the director of chamber music and orchestra activities at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was director of the Music Division of the Boston Conservatory of Music. Coppock has been active as a teacher for 40 years, and during his time in Minnesota, served on the chamber music faculty of the University of Minnesota School of Music. Coppock earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in cello from the New England Conservatory, where he was a student of David Soyer and Laurence Lesser.
Current Primary Activity(ies):
Retired from Orchestra management; maintain active national artistic leadership and management consulting practice. Cello and chamber music faculty, Longy School of Music at Bard College. Active as cellist, cello teacher and chamber music coach in the Boston area.
Education:
NEC
Degree:
BM, MM
Other Teachers:
David Soyer